Lapis Lazul Across the Map and the Ages

Mesopotamia, the fertile valley between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, home to the world’s earliest civilizations: the Sumerians, Akkadians, Babylonians, Assyrians. From the Epic of Gilgamesh to cuneiform to Hammurabi’s code, this land has birthed many great accomplishments still recognized to this day. However, not all of these ancient works were literature. One of the most influential kings of Babylon -- Nebuchadnezzar II -- was known for his extravagant architecture and decoration, from the hanging gardens of Babylon to his ziggurat tower.

One of my favorite remnants from this time period is the enormous and intricate Ishtar Gate, which is decorated with giant lions and bulls in honor of the goddess Ishtar. Constructed in ancient Babylon, the entryway is a capsule of values and traditions from Mesopotamian times, covered in shimmering blue lapis lazuli that would’ve been brilliant in the context of a desert. Here is an image of the gate:

Nebuchadnezzar, recognizing the cultural and aesthetic importance of his gate, wrote an inscription: “I, Nebuchadnezzar, laid the foundation of the gates down to the groundwater level and had them built out of pure blue stone. Upon the walls in the inner room of the gate are bulls and dragons. And thus, I magnificently adorned them with luxurious splendor for all mankind to behold in awe.”

As stated in Khan Academy’s video, “And [here] we are in awe two and a half millennia later. Nebuchadnezzar understood his place in history… wrote inscriptions in his [creations] that not only identified them but also asked future rules to rebuild them for him. It’s as though he knew that empires come and go, and that he could speak across history.”

This same ultramarine lapis lazuli is valued across many cultures and nations, from Badakhshan to Siberia to the Hindu Kush mountains. The deepest blues of lapis lazuli were most valuable; the highest quality lapis lazuli could be turned into a pigment by grinding down the rock and carefully purifying the powder.

This beautiful blue can then be used to decorate manuscripts from all over the globe, including European, Persian, and Armenian manuscripts.

Sources

"Ishtar gate and Processional Way." Khan Academy. Web. 22 Apr. 2017.

"Exploring Ultramarine." Bodleian Libraries. Web. 22 Apr. 2017.

A Feast for Samurai Warriors, And Me (A Study of Japanese Bento)

Hello Kitty made of onigiri rice balls, hot dogs shaped like octopus and snails, colorful carrots and apples in the shapes of rabbits and bunnies -- all of these cute characters and animals are stars in the Japanese bento meal, a hallmark of Japanese cuisine since the 1600s.

Even in Japanese culture today, traditionally, the Japanese do not eat while walking. This polite etiquette can be traced back to the samurai. In fact, the samurai were the ones who carried elaborate bento meals in tiered, lacquered boxes on long journeys, because it was not customary to eat in public places. Though originally designed for mobility and practicality, the bento has become a representation of Japanese culture and Japanese values today, as I discovered in my bento project for Japanese!

The most important aspect of the bento is its longevity. For samurai warriors, travelers, or people who worked outdoors, the pickled foods inside bento are convenient. Also, bento do not need to be warmed necessarily to be delicious, making it the perfect food for the traveler!

Now, bento are available everywhere in Japan: department stores, convenience stores, train stations, and even through take-out! But the essentials of bento -- underneath the cute decorations and colors modern-day bento are now adorned with -- are still visible! For example, like I mentioned earlier, pickled foods, or “tsukemono” in Japanese, such as pickled daikon, radish, and eggplant can be found in most bento. Bento are traditionally very healthy, and contain various types of foods: steamed, boiled, fried foods; and vegetables, fruits, and meats. They offer an array of colors, shapes, textures, and tastes, delicious both in taste as well as looks! Moreover, bento are neat and compartmentalized, with each separate food in its own section; the sections are often divided with ornamental plastic grass.

With this history and these values in mind, I set off and created my own bento -- using pickled foods, vegetables, meats, rice and various colors, tastes, and textures to try and capture the essence of bento and Japanese culture. Here are a few photos!

Here's a reflection in Japanese!

メルバ ヌゼン, 2017 年 4月14日, 弁当 の プロジェクト

日本 の 弁当 の 中 に 日本 の 文化 と かちかん が あるし,  おいしいし, 私逹 は 日本 の 食べ物  が 大好きだ。日本 の 弁当 と 西洋的 な お昼ご飯 は ちょっと ちがう。 最しょに, 日本 の 弁当 は とても けんこう的 で 長持ちする。 いろいろ な 色 が 見られ, 弁当 は きれい で 美しい。 弁当 は とても そしきてき で きれいだ から, 弁当 を 食べる事 は べんり だ。私逹 の 弁当 の テーマ は 動物 だ ! とくに 森 の 動物 と 海 の  動物 だ。 私逹 の 弁当 は 二そうだ。一そう は 森 の物 で, 二そう は 海 の 物 だ。

最しょに, 弁当 の 中 に いろ いろ な 東洋的 な 食べ物  が あってから,  弁当 は とても けんこう的だ。 たとえば, あげ物 や つけ物 や に物 や やさい が ある。 私逹 は 天ぷら という あげ物 を 作った。 き色 な エビ 天ぷら は とても クリスピーだ。 森 の 物 の そう で, やわらかい チャーハン が ある。弁当 の 中 に, たくあん という つけ物 は エビ天ぷら の となり に ある。そして, も たくあん という つけ物 が ある。かたくてき色 な たくあん は とても おいしい だ。山 から の 物 のそう で やわらか くて むらさき な ナス や みどり な きゅうり や たくあん が ある。それから, つけ物 の となり に, やさい が ある。 たとえば, にんじん や したけ や ブロッコリー や レタス が ある。オレンジ で かたい にんじん は とても けんこう 的 だ。あかくてまるい かたち な いちご と りんご が ある。そして, 私逹 の 弁当 の 中 に いろいろな 肉 が ある。たとえば,  ホットドッグ と エビ 天ぷら という 海の物 だ。最後 に, に物 が あって, たまご と ホットドッグ が ある。

    そして, 二番目 持ちょう は お弁当 の 中 に, いろいろ な かざり と 形 が あって から, お弁当 を 見る事 は とても きれい で かわいい。私逹 の 弁当 の 一そう で 森 の 動物 が ある。おにぎりは いろいろな 森の動物 の形 だ。たとえば, ねこ や ぶた や うさぎ だ。ホットドッグ の 形 は かたつむり だ。りんご は うさぎ の 形 だ。ねずみ の 形 な たまご は チャーハン の 上 に ある。とても かわいい 形 だ! そして, いろいろ な かざり な 食べ物 が ある。たとえば, き色な たくあん と オレンジ な にんじん は 日 の 形 だ. みどり な ブロコリ は 森 の 木。それから, 私逹 の 弁当 の 二そう で 海 の  動物が ある。わかめ サラダ の となり に, タコ の 形な ホットドッグ が ある。 にんじん は 魚 の 形 だ。にんじん 魚 は ふりかけ の 海 に およぐ。 しいたけ は カメ の 形 だ。そして, お弁当 は 右 と 左 と 上 と 下 の 違い が ある。きす の 物 が 多い。 たとえば, たまご ねずみ が 一 匹 (ひき) あって, りんご うさぎ が 三匹 あって, おにぎり 動物 が 五匹 ある。最後に, 私達 の 弁当 の 中 に, きせつ の 食べ物 が ある。日本 で, 夏 の 食べ物 は ナス や きょうり や レタス だ。この きせつ の 食べ物 は 私達 の 弁当 の 中 に 見る 事 が 出来る。そして, しいたけ という 日本 の 春 の 食べ物  も ある。私達 の 弁当 の 冬 の 食べ物 は だいこん や いちご や りんご だ。

    次に, 三番目の特ちょう は, 私達の弁当はとてもきれいだ。伝統的な 弁当 で はないけど、色々な伝統的な作り方を使った。まず、最初に、とても大切なことは食べ物が小さく切ってあることだ。こうすれば食べやすいし、お弁当箱に入れやすいし、便利だ。これをさらにもっと便利にするためにちがう食べ物を分けておいてある。ちがう食べ物がアルミのカップとみどり色の草の形をしたプラスチックで分けてある。そして, お弁当 は とても べつべつ だ。私達 は 安い 食べ物 を 使った ので, 弁当 を 作る 事 は べんり で 安い。弁当 は 青い 弁当箱 (ばこ) に 入れて, 学校 へ 持って行く。最後に, おはし で 私達 は お弁当 を 食べます。

けつろんとして, 私達 の 日本 の 弁当 は とても  おいしい!  大好きだ。この 弁当 を 作りながら 日本 の 文化 の 事 を たくさん 勉強 を した。 たとえば, なぜお弁当 の 中 の 食べ物が 分けてあるか。 アメリカ で もそういうこと を習った 方 が いい と 思う。 お弁当 は 日本のきちんとした所 を よくひょうげん する。こんど 日本 の マーケット 行った 時お弁当 を 買ってね!

A Faded Fairytale (Perspective of a Melting Pot from the Daughter of Immigrants)

For as far back as I can remember, stories entwine with my memories from childhood. Memories of Harry Potter and fairy tales and oral rememberings from my parents have been worn down, soft and dull and subdued, from being handled by my clumsy hands one too many times. They are fond memories.

But recently, I’ve realized that the mystic, fantastical air with which my parents tell stories sometimes shroud the truth underneath. Here’s a poem that I wrote about it.

Once upon a time, they are just stories. Once upon a time, she listens to them with awe: tales of magical beasts, ancient kingdoms, and endless seas that have hungry, filching hands awaiting escapees and adventurers alike. She learns of humid rain and the smell of earth before a storm; through these stories, she tastes sweet lychee and raw coconut; she learns to build boats with her bare hands and -- from her concrete jungle of a city -- she dreams of the old country, her thoughts laced with nostalgia and stained with syrupy condensed milk and blistering tropical sun.

Every night, right before she slips into the blurry haze between consciousness and sleep, her parents swirl stories into her thoughts.

Once upon a time, there was a princess who found unimaginable wishes at the bottom of the ocean: rich draperies and gold rings and the scarlet feather of a phoenix. Long, long ago, there was a young man by the ocean, who woke up early every morning to watch the sun blink sleepily, to sail out on the sea and surround himself with endless, endless water, waiting for the right day to sail across the ocean. In the old country, there was a slumbering dragon, its belly full of fire hotter than the sun and its wrath larger and older than the earth and its greed deeper and colder than the icy ocean.

Here, her parents tell her, here is the overlap between land and sea, a kingdom less of an empire and more of a land only loyal to the earth and the wind and the slow storms. Here, when summer comes, the plants unfurl their leathery fronds; the earth begins to move slowly, like a great beast stirring into consciousness. The dirt and soil drinks in the clean rain and the soft smell of petrichor releases from a yawning maw as the beast awakens. Storms crackle over the horizon and the dragon flexes its poisonous claws, unfurls its leathery wings. Here is the edge of the world, here is the line between sea and skyline, they say, and here is how you cross it.

She asks for more stories every day, reaches out with sweaty palms to ask for more, as if these stories are real, as if they are reminders that can fit into the palm of your hand, remnants of a past life that fit in the hollow of your cheek so you can bring them on a small boat across the sea.

In school, her chubby fingers grab fat red crayons to carve mountains and fire and dragons out of printer paper.

Her mother tells her of the food there: tin Tiffin boxes and enormous bowls of rich pork broth, carrying poles with enormous woven baskets on either side, the banyan trees peering down on curdling goat’s milk; her father tells her of a revolution: an endless fleet of boats -- like fish swimming desperately up a stream -- fleeing a harbor, out of the maw of the beast and into the hungry, filching hands of the sea. Here is the match that lit the flame, they say, here is the call that woke the beast; here is fire and here is fury and here is how you leave.

    Outside of her open window, the city calls, a screeching cacophony of urban traffic and the rush of life, a constant reminder of where she lives, of where she will have to go. She wonders where she belongs. She wonders where she has to go. On her desk, her notebook paper rustles with the wind. She picks up her pen.

    Once upon a time, she believed they were just stories.

    She grows older and realizes that they are not just stories.

    Once upon a time, she’d never seen anything with a knife for a tongue or creatures with poison-tipped claws; maybe she believed those stories were fantasy because it wasn’t possible to understand, it was so difficult to comprehend. How can you understand a wildfire when you’ve only used small matchsticks to keep warm? How can you understand what it takes to leave your home behind when home is where you’ve lived your whole life?

And how could she know? She will never feel the insistent flames of a revolution or that horrible, dark fear of no land past the sea, of no wind filling the sails; will never come face to face with beasts as ancient as dragons. But perhaps, she will face mountains of steel and birds of metal instead, swap out dark jungles for concrete cities.

    Either way, she has her stories.

And in the end, they are still stories. Except they’re slightly starchy with grains of truth, a little gritty on the tongue, slightly bitter with a worldliness and a deep kind of hunger too powerful to be made up; but, after all, aren’t the best stories the ones of our own lives?

Once upon a time, there was a girl who lived in a world half-fantasy and half-reality, living the best kind of lucid dream, between the sky and the shoreline, between the past and the future, between kingdoms and democracy.

She is insatiable; she is young and she wants the world. She wants blistered skin from the tropical sun and treasures from the bottom of the greedy ocean and a fang from the yawning maw of the beast. She lives with once upon a time and long long ago and in the old country tucked into the space between her molars and her cheek, small enough to fit in the hollow of her cheek, to bring with her wherever she goes. When she smiles, the edges of her lips twist with the sweetness of condensed milk and raw sunshine, with the fire of a dragon’s breath. And, with that, she lives happily ever after.

A Walk in the Woods (Analysis of Walden by Henry David Thoreau)

As one of the most prominent figures of the transcendentalist movement, Henry David Thoreau captures the heart of transcendentalism in his writing. His memoir Walden is the epitome of transcendentalist writing. At the time, transcendentalism relied on contemplation and philosophy, emphasizing “non-rational, intuitive feeling” (American Transcendentalism). Individuals who believed in transcendentalism were often recluses, or at least solitary in their lives. Transcendentalists focused on themselves, cultivating their thoughts and ideas in peaceful settings, which caused many Transcendentalists to wish to “return to nature,” where society and materialism could not reach them (American Transcendentalism). This is evident in Henry David Thoreau’s own life: Thoreau left society for two years to live in nature, near Walden Pond. Thoreau “sought to live the Transcendental life to its fullest potential,” living deliberately and thinking carefully with only nature for company (Transcendentalism). His resulting work, Walden, highlights the essentials of Transcendentalism: the purity of nature compared to society, intuitive thinking and philosophy, and solitude and individualism.

The book itself is one of many themes and topics: Thoreau discusses nature and the animals around the Walden pond, the flaws of modern society, and philosophy in regards to solitude and the world.

In the first and longest chapter, Economy, Thoreau claims that in modern societies workers are always suffering. A worker works until he becomes a machine and cannot enjoy the finer things in life. Thoreau highlights subjects such as history, poetry, and mythology to show that there is more than just work to be experienced.

Thoreau alludes to the hierarchy of needs, arguing that if man has ample “food, shelter, clothing, and fuel,” he should not need “more warmth of the same kind… more and richer food,” and more of the same basic needs he already has (Thoreau 13). Man should then move up the hierarchy, towards more intellectual and spiritual levels. In these philosophical claims, Thoreau also intersperses descriptions of his own shelter at the Walden pond: the shanty he lived in, the woods surrounding him, the materials he bought.

In the rest of Walden, Thoreau covers several topics related to each chapter. Thoreau discusses how he lives simply, but deliberately, constantly aware of his surroundings and himself. As a student, Thoreau emphasizes the timelessness and importance of knowledge, specifically the lack of access to many colleges for students.

Surrounding Walden pond are a variety of animals and plants that Thoreau carefully records and describes. The isolation of the pond and Thoreau’s descriptions of the plants that he has grown make it seem as though he has his own world.  He explains that he has no more burdens or sadness, and contemplates the meaning of closeness and solitude.

Furthermore, Thoreau claims that the serenity of nature creates an environment conducive to thought and reflection. He discusses the balance between his philosophic thoughts and his more primitive thoughts, his innate desire to live in the wild and to sit and watch the world.

Walden’s various topics are all linked together with common themes. Thoreau emphasizes the importance of living deliberately and living life to the fullest; he thinks that people should work, but should not lose themselves to work; people are all innately students, who should strive to think critically, learn, and educate themselves; society makes it easy for people to conform, but sometimes, when appropriate, breaking tradition can be beneficial; human life consists of a balance between basic needs or instincts and higher callings or spiritual thoughts; no matter the circumstances, people are always given new opportunities and life should be valued as something precious. Here are four of the most memorable quotes from Walden for me:

I.

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion. (87)

For the first time in Walden, Thoreau begins discussing the reason why he came to Walden Pond. He claims to want to live “deliberately,” leaving behind materialism and any chains from society (87). Thoreau wants to live “deep” and deliberate, which is reminiscent of earlier chapters when he claims that workers have fallen into easy paths, working mindlessly, without thinking. This quote captures the essence of one of Thoreau’s messages in Walden: that life should be lived to its fullest, without barriers like materialistic greeds or society’s standards; this is why Thoreau leaves society in the first place, to strip himself of the chains -- in this case, an abundance of things he does not need -- that hold him back from finding deeper meaning in life.

Earlier in this passage, Thoreau explains why waking up early can be beneficial. He believes that “to be awake is to be alive,” and that people “must learn to reawaken and keep [them]selves awake” (87), which may apply to waking up at dawn but also applies to living life. Thoreau criticizes workers and society in the previous chapter, claiming that workers have lost their grip on the finer things in life because they are too caught up in work. To counter this, Thoreau believes that living should constitute of self-discovery and thought. And to properly achieve self-discovery and thought, the other aspects of life that are not necessary must be stripped away, revealing an individual without ornamentation.

II.

This whole earth which we inhabit is but a point in space. How far apart, think you, dwell the two most distant inhabitants of yonder star, the breadth of whose disk cannot be appreciated by our instruments? Why should I feel lonely? Is not our planet in the Milky Way? This which you put seems to me not to be the most important question. What sort of space is that which separates a man from his fellows and makes him solitary? I have found that no exertion of the legs can bring two minds much nearer to one another. (130)

A major theme of Transcendentalism is isolation. Although Thoreau lives mostly in solitude in Walden, he never claims to be lonely. Many ask Thoreau whether or not he becomes lonely alone in the woods, and to this he answers by ruminating on the definition of being lonely. Even though he lives without company, Thoreau claims that such distance is relative. For instance, he thinks that earth “is but a point in space” (130), and since Earth is in the Milky Way, surrounded by other planets and stars and galaxies, he should have no reason to ever feel lonely. The distance between such bodies still is immeasurable by most scientific instruments anyway. Furthermore, Thoreau questions the meaning of solitude, asking what kind of space “separates a man from his fellows and makes him solitary” (130). To answer this, Thoreau claims that there is no correlation between physical proximity and company; even though people live close together, they can still be lonely.

And so to answer the question initially posed to him, Thoreau concludes that such space between individuals is all relative, and that, even if two people are physically close to one another, they may not be emotionally or mentally connected.

III.

Let the thunder rumble; what if it threaten ruin to farmers’ crops? that is not its errand to thee. Take shelter under the cloud, while they flee to carts and sheds. Let not to get a living be thy trade, but thy sport. Enjoy the land, but own it not. Though want of enterprise and faith men are where they are, buying and selling, and spending their lives like serfs. (202)

From the first chapter of Walden, Thoreau makes his stance on work and overworking clear: if an individual works too hard and loses sight of other things in life, that individual no longer enjoys life, and no longer has the opportunity to enjoy the finer things in life, such as literature or philosophy. This quote is the summation of what Thoreau believes life should be: a balance between work and self-fulfillment; work, but only enough to live. If individuals work too much, they become slaves to their work, without control of their lives, slaves to the economy and materialism. Man becomes machine, unable to enjoy softer things, since “the finest qualities of [human] nature… can be preserved only by the most delicate handling” (4).

This train of thought is not dissimilar from other Transcendentalist authors; in fact, in his speech The American Scholar, Ralph Waldo Emerson observes how a man working “sinks into the [role of] the farmer,” thinking of nothing but work, falling into an easy path, his soul becoming “subject to dollars.” Thoreau aptly claims that, in these scenarios, society “do[es] not ride on the railroad; it rides upon [society]” (89).

Both this memorable quote and this theme highlight one of the fundamentals of Transcendentalism.

IV.

[The eagle] mount[ed] again and again with its strange chuckle… repeat[ing] its free and beautiful fall, turning over and over like a kite, and then recovering from its lofty tumbling, as if it had never set its foot on terra firma. It appeared to have no companion in the universe -- sporting there alone -- and to need none but the morning and the ether with which it played. It was not lonely, but made all the earth lonely beneath it. (308)

Thoreau leaves his cabin one particular day and looks up in the sky to see an eagle soaring without worry. In a way, the eagle represents Thoreau, who has also left society and his world behind. But, as mentioned in earlier chapters, Thoreau does not feel lonely by himself; he claims that “no exertion of the legs can bring two minds much nearer to one another” (130). In his chosen solitude, Thoreau lives his own life and learns about the world around him without any care for company. In his books, in his thoughts, and in his gardening, Thoreau finds company, more valuable than human company could offer. The eagle as Thoreau shows how Thoreau has elevated himself -- through thought and meditation -- above some of his peers; Thoreau has reached a point in his life where he relishes his life, not just his work. His eagle plays with the “morning and the ether,” falling and twisting through the sky (308); in the same way, Thoreau plays with his philosophical thoughts and ideas, molding them into different shapes, which he translates onto paper. Like his eagle, by giving up materialistics desires, Thoreau is free from any worry, able to enjoy living his own life.

Works Cited

"Henry David Thoreau." Biography.com. A&E Networks Television, 02 Apr. 2014. Web. 05 Mar. 2017.

Lenat, Richard. "American Transcendentalism." American Transcendentalism. Web. 05 Mar. 2017.

Lewis, Jone. "The American Scholar." Ralph Waldo Emerson -- Texts. 09 Mar. 2009. Web. 05 Mar. 2017.

Thoreau, Henry David. Walden: Annotated and With an Introd. by Walter Harding. New York, Washington Square Press. 1967. Print.

"Trancendentalism." The Literature Network: Online classic literature, poems, and quotes. Essays & Summaries. Jalic Inc. Web. 05 Mar. 2017.

The Missing Bulletholes (A Story from How Not to Be Wrong: the Power of Mathematical Thinking by Jordan Ellenberg)

Ancient castles from a time long past rise from green pastures, spiked turrets piercing the bellies of fat, dark clouds that swirl overhead. Around these castles, the mountains rise and fall like uneven breaths. The country of Romania often looks like something out of a fairytale, a picturesque backdrop printed onto jigsaw puzzles.

    In Romania, around 100 or more years ago, a baby was born, the grandson of a rabbi and the son of a kosher baker. This baby, Abraham Wald, grew up educated and knowledgable, only to be turned away from opportunities in the then nation of Austria-Hungary because of his Jewish heritage. He moved to New York City as Word War II began, working with a statistical research group in a department that supported American troops and artillery on the warfront: essentially, he was supposed to defend American war planes.

    But of course, each plane could only carry so much armor as defense: with too much armor the planes would become too heavy to fly efficiently, but too little armor made the planes vulnerable to enemy fire. Wald would have to figure out where to pad the planes in the most effective location.

Drawing on his statistical skills, Wald analyzed the data that researchers gave him: according to the data collected from planes that returned, the most frequently hit part of the plane was close to the fuselage; compared to the rest of the body, the engine was the part of the plane that was least damaged.

And so after Wald mulled over the data, they asked him: where should we armor our planes? To this, Wald answered, the engine.

At first, there was confusion: Wald decided to armor the plane that, statistically speaking, got hit the least. He decided to do the opposite of what the data might indicate him to do.

But Wald, unlike the generals and officers and pilots who fought on the warfront, was  mathematician. As Ellenberg describes it, “A mathematician is always asking, ‘What assumptions are you making? And are they justified?’”

Wald essentially said: well, yes, given that data and given the research provided to us, the most obvious place to armor the plane would be the fuselage -- because that is the place that’s hit most often. However, this data is to be interpreted one of two ways: either German bullets were somehow consistently missing the plane engines, or there was something larger than this picture provided by the data. Wald asked, where are the rest of the bullets?

An analogy: when you walk into a hospital, there are bulletholes in the wounded: holes in the arms, legs, maybe their sides. But very rarely do you see bulletholes in the head or in the chest. This phenomenon Wald proposed would eventually be called survivorship bias.

If you use only the data of the planes you receive, you assume that these planes -- you assume that this data collected -- offer a random sample of all the planes that are shot. The sample that Wald received, however, was not a random sample. The planes that the researchers showed to Wald were samples only from the planes that returned. The planes that were destroyed were shot in the engines. By taking this into account, Wald concluded that the most logical place to armor the planes would be the engines. Neat, huh? Ellenberg describes many other mathematical discoveries and applications in her book How Not to Be Wrong: the Power of Mathematical Thinking, in addition to the story of Abraham Wald and his missing bullet holes explained here.

A Work in Progress (JOURNYS Original Research Article on CRISPR-Cas9)

In the late 19th century, Friedrich Miescher isolated an unknown substance, something that was neither a protein nor lipid. Since it was found in a cell nucleus, Mischer named it a nuclein, later renamed deoxyribonucleic acid, or DNA for short [1]. However, it wasn’t until the mid-1900s that DNA—not protein—was proven through several experiments involving bacteriophages to be the macromolecule that carried genetic material. After that, two men by the name of Watson and Crick published a succinct paper detailing the double-helix structure of DNA, another milestone in the study of science and biology [2], and in 2003, the entirety of the human genome was sequenced and mapped.

It seems as though there are new discoveries every day in the field of science, especially in the studies of DNA and genetics. Since the discovery of DNA, there have been an increasing number of people and experiments invested in learning even more about the so-called “blueprint of life.” But even in  the rapidly developing area of genome engineering and editing, there are discoveries that stand out. A particularly outstanding recent development is CRISPR-Cas9.

Today, there are thousands of known human genetic disorders, such as hemophilia, Huntington’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, and sickle cell disease, to name a few [3]. Now, to cure these genetic diseases, imagine using a new type of gene editing technology that could go into any human genome and cut out specific abnormal or disease-carrying segments of DNA, replacing them with different, more desirable strands of DNA [4]. Imagine using the same technology to purposefully engineer specific traits into or out of animal or human DNA; this is the ultimate goal of CRISPR-Cas9. Although the technology isn’t sophisticated enough to accomplish such specific engineering yet, CRISPR-Cas9 certainly opens up many intriguing opportunities in the world of genetic engineering.

The history of CRISPR, or Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats, begins a little further in the past than one might expect. In the decade leading up to the 21st century, scientists began identifying unusual repeating sequences of DNA in bacterial genomes. These short, repeating bacterial sequences of DNA were CRISPR. However, in the same way that the discovery of DNA proved to be underwhelming until DNA was proven to be genetic material, the discovery of CRISPR was of little importance until 2007, about thirty years after CRISPR were first identified. In a study led by Rodolphe Barrangou and Philippe Horvath, two researchers working at the company DuPont, scientists discovered that CRISPR were actually a type of defense mechanism used by bacteria against their assailants: viruses, phages, and plasmids [5]. The bacterial immune system breaks down the intrusive virus DNA, cutting the pathogenic DNA into unusable segments, which are then saved and inserted into the bacteria’s DNA, stored in the CRISPR spaces with an enzyme called Cas9 that has the ability to cut across DNA. The segments of virus DNA are then transcribed into RNA strands called guide RNA, or gRNA, which function as tags, duplicated from and designed to stick to viral DNA. Thus, if the bacteria is attacked by the same virus, gRNA identifies and tags the virus. Then Cas9 can cut up the intruder virus’s DNA, completely eliminating the virus. Essentially, bacteria can use old virus DNA they saved to identify new intruding viruses, and then Cas9 cuts up the intruding viral genome, protecting bacteria from harm [6, 7].

Scientists were quick to see how the CRISPR-Cas9 technique could be applied to human genetics. In 2013, researchers were able to use a version of the CRISPR-Cas9 system to cut DNA in both mouse cells and human cells using RNA guide sequences [8]. CRISPR-Cas9 cut the mouse and human DNA precisely where the scientists wanted it to, which showed the CRISPR-Cas9 system’s first real potential for becoming a precise gene-editing technique—not only for bacteria, but mammals and humans as well. Now, using any strand of selected DNA, CRISPR-Cas9 can potentially identify and edit desirable genes into or out of any human genome.

While  the broader field of gene-editing is not a revolutionary idea, with the CRISPR-Cas9 technique, gRNA only tags dangerous viral DNA, only neutralizing  dangerous viruses and making the CRISPR-Cas9 technique more effective and accurate than other genome editing techniques. The CRISPR-Cas9 technique’s precision, accuracy and affordability have made it one of the most popular techniques for gene-editing in 2016 [6, 9]. For example, a group of Chinese scientists have planned on using the CRISPR technique on a human patient, testing engineered cells in treating lung cancer [10]. Though the treatment is still recruiting participants, the experiments plans on inserting a programmed cell death gene into blood cells with CRISPR, then reintroducing those edited blood cells back into the patient. In cancer cells, cell death signals are ignored, resulting in the uncontrollable division of these cells. The introduced death gene is meant to prevent the metastasis and continued proliferation of these cancer cells. Numerous other experiments—from growing longer cashmere goat hair to engineering tougher crops to developing immune cells to attack cancer—involve CRISPR, which continues to be a diverse technique applicable to many fields [11, 12]. In the case of the cashmere goats, the researchers, using CRISPR, edited a specific follicle gene that resulted in longer and more cashmere [11]. For crops, CRISPR has been also used to successfully create strains of grain that are genetically engineered to be more disease-resistant and drought-resistant [12]. The success of these experiments show how many possibilities CRISPR can offer science and the world.

However, as with any new technology, there are arguments against the use and the effectiveness of CRISPR-Cas9. Ethical arguments against CRISPR and gene-editing include the fear that the ability to manipulate DNA may result in abnormal and unnatural animals or even humans. Selective control over undesirable or desirable traits may lead to eugenics [13, 14]. Ethics aside, many consider CRISPR-Cas9 too novel and too untested to be a viable option for gene-editing. Only in its early stages of development, CRISPR-Cas9 still requires refinement to answer criticism. How can CRISPR-Cas9 treat humans if no two human genomes are identical? Why would CRISPR be used when there are safer, more tested options on the market? What if removing a gene containing a disease makes the disease worse? Furthermore, the large size of the human genome, in comparison to bacterial DNA, often has identical sequences of DNA, which CRISPR-Cas9 could cut accidentally [14]. Nevertheless, since its early results with mammal DNA and plant DNA are promising, with more tests and more time, CRISPR-Cas9 may prove these critics wrong, and become the next breakthrough in science.

Although  CRISPR-Cas9 currently remains in its developmental stage, with research focused solely on isolated human cells and animal subjects, it’s evident that the technology is quickly developing. Like the rest of the research dedicated to DNA and genetics, CRISPR-Cas9 has gained popularity with time. From 2011 to 2016 alone, there was a 1,453% increase in number of published scientific papers about CRISPR and for good reason: the potentials of CRISPR are limitless [15]. Whether it be creating more prosperous crops, curing cancer or altering human embryos, CRISPR-Cas9 has  the potential to impact all aspects of human life and is a scientific development that deserves attention in the future.

Works Cited

1. Dahm, Ralf. "Discovering DNA: Friedrich Miescher and the early years of nucleic acid research." Human Genetics Jan. 2008: 565-81. Print.
2. "The Francis Crick Papers: The Discovery of the Double Helix, 1951-1953." U.S. National Library of Medicine. National Institutes of Health. Web. 18 Jan. 2017.
3. "Specific Genetic Disorders." National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI). 18 Jan. 2017. Web. 19 Jan. 2017.
4. "CRISPR/Cas9 GENE EDITING." CRISPR Therapeutics. Web. 17 Jan. 2017.
5. Barrangou, Rodolphe, and Philippe Horvath. "The CRISPR System Protects Microbes against Phages, Plasmids." Microbe 2009: 224-30. Print.
6. "Research Highlights: CRISPR." Broad Institute. Broad Institute, 2016. Web. 19 Jan. 2017.
7. Pak, Ekaterina. "CRISPR: A game-changing genetic engineering technique." Science in the News. Harvard University: The Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, 31 July 2014. Web. 19 Jan. 2017.
8. Cong, L., F. A. Ran, D. Cox, R. Barretto, N. Habib, P. D. Hsu, et. al. "Multiplex genome engineering using CRISPR/Cas systems." National Center for Biotechnology Information. U.S. National Library of Medicine, 15 Feb. 2013. Web. 19 Jan. 2017.
9. "What is CRISPR-Cas9?" Your Genome. Wellcome Genome Campus, 19 Dec. 2016. Web. 19 Jan. 2017.
10. "PD-1 Knockout Engineered T Cells for Metastatic Non-small Cell Lung Cancer." ClinicalTrials.gov. U.S. National Institutes of Health, Nov. 2016. Web. 19 Jan. 2017.
11. Wang, Xiaolong, Bei Cai, Jiankui Zhou, et. al. "Disruption of FGF5 in Cashmere Goats Using CRISPR/Cas9 Results in More Secondary Hair Follicles and Longer Fibers." PLOS Journals. PLOS ONE, 22 Nov. 2016. Web. 19 Jan. 2017.
12. Talbot, David. "10 Breakthrough Technologies 2016: Precise Gene Editing in Plants." MIT Technology Review. MIT Technology Review, 21 Feb. 2017. Web. 16 Apr. 2017.
13. Andrew, Elise. "Genome Editing Poses Ethical Problems That We Cannot Ignore." IFLScience. IFLScience, 15 Aug. 2016. Web. 16 Apr. 2017.
14. Rodriguez, E. "Ethical Issues in Genome Editing Using Crispr/Cas9 System." OMICS International. OMICS International, 24 Mar. 2016. Web. 16 Apr. 2017.
15. "STAT’s stats of the year: 2016 by the numbers." STATnews.com. STAT, 28 Dec. 2016. Web. 19 Jan. 2017.